Soledad Sevilla. Rhythms, Grids and Variables
Throughout her career, the painter Soledad Sevilla (Valencia, 1944) has developed a rigorous language based on the purity of line and colour, and on the construction of forms derived from geometric modules. This exhibition, curated by Isabel Tejeda, provides a chronological overview of the artist鈥檚 career through more than a hundred works, ranging from her early experiments at the Computing Centre of the University of Madrid to her most recent creations, some of which were made specifically for the exhibition. The retrospective underscores the artist鈥檚 assertion that she has painted the same picture throughout her life, linking her early works from the 1960s with her most recent series, such as Horizontes Blancos (White Horizons) and Esperando a Sempere (Waiting for Sempere), in which she pays tribute to her mentor and friend, Eusebio Sempere.
Although initially associated with the heterogeneous group of Spanish artists who adhered to the aesthetic principles of geometric abstraction 鈥� a group with whom she has remained close throughout her life 鈥� Sevilla soon distanced herself from using the computer as an artistic tool. Between 1980 and 1982, she spent time in Boston, a period crucial to the development of her career. There, she created, among other projects, the series Keiko, Stella and Belmont, which feature delicate, fine line drawings that anticipated the sense of vibration that would characterise her later paintings. Upon her return, line, patterns and light as vehicles of emotion led the artist to work on two essential pillars of Spanish culture: Las Meninas by Diego Vel谩zquez and the Andalusian architecture of the Alhambra in Granada 鈥� the city where she now resides.
By the mid-1990s, an accumulation of brushstrokes began to rhythmically fill her canvases 鈥� as seen in En ruinas II (In Ruins II) and D铆ptico de Valencia (Valencia Diptych) 鈥� and nature began to dominate her works. A 鈥渧egetal magma鈥�, in Sevilla鈥檚 own words, compacts the surface of the canvas, gradually revealing a line of light. Hanging vegetation, sleepless nights 鈥� represented in her serie Insomnio (Insomnia series)鈥� and agricultural architecture lead the viewer to see the world through a woven pattern: patterns of leaves or plastic meshes inspired by the tobacco drying sheds of the Vega of Granada.
The generation of installations, through which Soledad Sevilla expands her aesthetic concerns into the spatial realm, has been another key aspect of her work since the 1980s. This exhibition documents some of her historical interventions, such as V茅lez Blanco, created at the V茅lez-Blanco Castle in Almer铆a as part of the Plus Ultra Project for Expo 鈥�92; or El tiempo vuela (Time Flies), a vanitas [a symbolic artwork reflecting on the transience of life and time] first displayed at the Galer铆a Soledad Lorenzo in 1998. At the same time, the artist presents Donde estaba la l铆nea (Where the Line Was), a new site-specific installation in which she uses cotton thread to intervene in the Museum鈥檚 space.
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Throughout her career, the painter Soledad Sevilla (Valencia, 1944) has developed a rigorous language based on the purity of line and colour, and on the construction of forms derived from geometric modules. This exhibition, curated by Isabel Tejeda, provides a chronological overview of the artist鈥檚 career through more than a hundred works, ranging from her early experiments at the Computing Centre of the University of Madrid to her most recent creations, some of which were made specifically for the exhibition. The retrospective underscores the artist鈥檚 assertion that she has painted the same picture throughout her life, linking her early works from the 1960s with her most recent series, such as Horizontes Blancos (White Horizons) and Esperando a Sempere (Waiting for Sempere), in which she pays tribute to her mentor and friend, Eusebio Sempere.
Although initially associated with the heterogeneous group of Spanish artists who adhered to the aesthetic principles of geometric abstraction 鈥� a group with whom she has remained close throughout her life 鈥� Sevilla soon distanced herself from using the computer as an artistic tool. Between 1980 and 1982, she spent time in Boston, a period crucial to the development of her career. There, she created, among other projects, the series Keiko, Stella and Belmont, which feature delicate, fine line drawings that anticipated the sense of vibration that would characterise her later paintings. Upon her return, line, patterns and light as vehicles of emotion led the artist to work on two essential pillars of Spanish culture: Las Meninas by Diego Vel谩zquez and the Andalusian architecture of the Alhambra in Granada 鈥� the city where she now resides.
By the mid-1990s, an accumulation of brushstrokes began to rhythmically fill her canvases 鈥� as seen in En ruinas II (In Ruins II) and D铆ptico de Valencia (Valencia Diptych) 鈥� and nature began to dominate her works. A 鈥渧egetal magma鈥�, in Sevilla鈥檚 own words, compacts the surface of the canvas, gradually revealing a line of light. Hanging vegetation, sleepless nights 鈥� represented in her serie Insomnio (Insomnia series)鈥� and agricultural architecture lead the viewer to see the world through a woven pattern: patterns of leaves or plastic meshes inspired by the tobacco drying sheds of the Vega of Granada.
The generation of installations, through which Soledad Sevilla expands her aesthetic concerns into the spatial realm, has been another key aspect of her work since the 1980s. This exhibition documents some of her historical interventions, such as V茅lez Blanco, created at the V茅lez-Blanco Castle in Almer铆a as part of the Plus Ultra Project for Expo 鈥�92; or El tiempo vuela (Time Flies), a vanitas [a symbolic artwork reflecting on the transience of life and time] first displayed at the Galer铆a Soledad Lorenzo in 1998. At the same time, the artist presents Donde estaba la l铆nea (Where the Line Was), a new site-specific installation in which she uses cotton thread to intervene in the Museum鈥檚 space.
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